WORLD
January 8, 2013 | By Barbara Demick
GUANGZHOU, China -- Communist Party officials appear to have defused a potential crisis over media censorship in Guangzhou with a compromise that persuaded journalists at a maverick newspaper to publish Thursday as planned. The journalists at Southern Weekly, one of China's boldest and most popular publications, had threatened to strike in protest over a New Year's editorial on political reform that was watered down by propaganda officials. The exact terms of the deal were not released, but it appears that the journalists agreed to refrain from airing their grievances in public about Tuo Zhen, the propaganda chief for Guangdong province accused of the heavy-handed censorship that sparked the standoff.
BUSINESS
December 27, 2012 | By David Pierson
BEIJING -- For years, China's net nannies turned the other cheek to a loophole in their vast online censorship apparatus. Anyone who wanted access to blocked overseas websites such as Twitter, Facebook, and more recently, the New York Times, need only download foreign software called a virtual private network (VPN) to circumvent the Great Firewall. But in recent weeks, even these tools have begun to falter, frustrating tech-savvy Chinese and foreign businesspeople who now struggle to access Internet sites as innocuous as gmail.com and imdb.com.
ENTERTAINMENT
December 6, 2012 | By Carolyn Kellogg
Chinese author Mo Yan was announced in October as the recipient of the Nobel Prize in literature; he's in Sweden now and will be presented with the award Monday. It was at a news conference in Stockholm that Mo made his disappointing statements in support of censorship. The Associated Press reports, "Mo said he doesn't feel that censorship should stand in the way of truth but that any defamation, or rumors, ' should be censored .' " The Nobel laureate then compared censorship to airport security checks.
ENTERTAINMENT
October 18, 2012 | By Julie Makinen
BEIJING - For most of the last two decades, director Lou Ye has angered Chinese authorities by making movies that touch on sensitive subjects like sex and politics and then by screening them at foreign festivals without official approval. He's had multiple films banned, and was barred for years from even practicing his craft. His newest work, the dark melodrama "Mystery," looked like a chance for the 47-year-old to come in from the cold. Lou received approval from China's censorship body before screening his movie at the Cannes International Film Festival in May. After the festival, he registered the $2.6 million noirish tale, made with 20% French financial backing, as an official French-Chinese co-production.
ENTERTAINMENT
October 4, 2012 | By David Ng
An artist in Kansas is claiming censorship over his unflattering depiction of Gov. Sam Brownback. David Loewenstein wrote on his personal blog that his print showing the politician as a demonic figure featuring the words "Reject Brownback" was taken down from a Topeka cafe. Brownback, a Republican, has also served as a U.S. representative and senator from Kansas. He was elected governor in 2010. Brownback received national attention last year when he eliminated the Kansas Arts Commission, making Kansas the first state to completely do away with arts funding. After intense pressure from arts advocates, Brownback somewhat reversed his decision by restoring some arts funding.
ENTERTAINMENT
June 12, 2012 | By Steven Zeitchik and Jonathan Landreth, Los Angeles Times
When aliens besiege Earth in Universal Pictures' recent action film"Battleship," it is the Chinese authorities in Hong Kong whom Washington credits with delivering the early proof that these invaders aren't exactly homegrown. But those aren't the only Chinese do-gooders on screen these days. In "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen,"a romantic comedy about building a dam in the Mideast, Chinese hydroelectric engineers showed off their know-how; the original book included no such characters.